Author's Note: I'm so sorry.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything ya hur.

Song: Mulan - "Reflection"

"Harry's last month with the Dusleys wasn't fun. [...] Half terrified, half furious, they acted as though any chair with Harry in it were empty. Although this was an improvement in many ways, it did become depressing after a while."
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone page 88.

Harry stood before the square-shaped window in his new room at number four, Privet Drive. Dudley's old room. Cluttered everywhere were Dudley's old abandoned toys, probably over a hundred things that Dudley would never used but still couldn't part with because his stupid blonde head had been trained from early childhood to think it was superior to Harry's. But now, no matter how many tantrums Dudley might throw and how many screaming fits lit up the eyes and ears of the nosy neighbors, the threat of magic had persuaded Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon to give Harry his own room.

That had, of course, been mostly the limit of contact between Harry and his family. It would have been peaceful, no doubt, if he hadn't been treated like a ghost for a few weeks - but being ignored was better than being ridiculed and neglected.

Still, even with his looming departure to Hogwarts on the first of September, he couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. That he was going to get there and it would all be a giant prank. He had believed it while he was with Hagrid in Diagon Alley, but it almost seemed as though when he got home, he couldn't seem to remember whether it had all been a dream or not. It had certainly felt like one...

But then when he looked up at the amber eyes of his beautiful new owl, he felt the rush of excitement all over again.

It was very late; the sky was a deep blue and an almost full moon lingered directly over where he looked outside, indicating it was around midnight. If he squinted or turned off the light in his room, he would be able to see the stars sprinkling all over the Little Whinging neighborhood. And he probably should turn his light off, he thought, because the neighbors were likely sneering out their windows, nosily wondering what in the world someone was doing up this hour on number four - but Harry didn't care. He didn't want to turn the light off... the light was sort of refreshing. It wasn't that he was afraid of the dark or anything - but the light radiating from his lamp was...

It made him feel less alone.

That's all he had really ever been, after all. He had Hedwig to talk to now, but she couldn't talk back. He had never had any real friends, and if his history said anything about him, he suspected he wouldn't get any at Hogwarts, either.

The thought terrified him. Who would want to be friends with him? A short, thin kid with messy hair and taped glasses. A kid who didn't know the first thing about magic, who would probably turn out to be a complete failure and would be sent back to Privet Drive to live forever. A kid who...who they would all see as famous, but was really just...a kid.

He hugged his arms around himself. It was the middle of August, but suddenly he found himself chilled. He lurched onto his bed for a few moments, before feeling a bout of restlessness and jumped back up to the window.

He pressed his face against the cool glass and peered down onto the street. All those other kids going to Hogwarts...they would stare at him with awed expressions and expect so much out of him - and they would think that they had heard his story so many times that they must already know him. But they didn't. They had no idea who he really was and what he was like. To them he was a superkid, a hero who defeated the Dark Lord - but really, he was just himself.

He glanced up and looked into his reflection's eyes. In the dim light created from his lamp, he could hardly make out the green color of his eyes or the paleness of his skin, but he wasn't really looking at that anyway. He was staring at his reflection without even really seeing it.

"Look at me," he whispered to no one. "I will never pass for a perfect bride, or a perfect daughter-"

He blinked, confused, unsure of what he had just said, before he shook it off.

"Can it be...I'm not meant to play this part?

"Now I see," he said, turning towards Hedwig, "That if I were truly to be myself, I would break my family's heart."

He turned away from the mirror and shrunk against the wall, wrapping his arms around his knobbly knees.

"Who is that boy I see, staring straight back at me - why is my reflection someone I don't know?

"Somehow I cannot hide who I am, though I've tried. When will my reflection show who I am inside?"

He rose slowly once more and glanced at his gaunt-looking eleven-year-old face in the windowpane.

"When will my reflection show...who I am...inside..."

After a moment more of staring, Harry moved slowly to his bed and shrunk under the covers, ready to stare at the ceiling until he fell asleep.

Author's Note: If you didn't imagine Harry with Mulan's voice, go back and read it again. HO HO HO.

I wish these songs were longer.